Welcome to a new world...

Starship Captain Ed Carew and his small ragtag crew are smugglers and ne’er-do-wells who regularly thumb their noses at the Expansion, the vast human hegemony encompassing thousands of worlds.

Well, until they’re caught.

They face a simple choice – work for the Expansion or face death.

So they must travel through the territory of the inscrutably alien Vetch in pursuit of a human vessel that set off for the strange worlds of the Devil’s Nebula one hundred years ago. Why are the Expansion authorities so eager to track down the ship and can Carew’s crew survive the journey through Vetch territory into the weird space beyond?